Are Smartphones Turning Us Into Bad Samaritans?

Busy with our tablets and smartphones in public places, we may be losing our sense of duty to others

We can't afford to be so preoccupied with our gadgets when we're in public spaces, says writer Christine Rosen in a conversation with WSJ's Gary Rosen.

By

Christine Rosen

Oct. 25, 2013 8:55 p.m. ET

In late September, on a crowded commuter train in San Francisco, a man shot and killed 20-year-old student Justin Valdez. As security footage shows, before the gunman fired, he waved around his .45 caliber pistol and at one point even pointed it across the aisle. Yet no one on the crowded train noticed because they were so focused on their smartphones and tablets. "These weren't concealed movements—the gun is very clear," District Attorney George Gascon later told the Associated Press. "These people are in very close proximity with him, and nobody sees this. They're just so engrossed, texting and reading and whatnot. They're completely oblivious of their surroundings."

Another recent attack, on a blind man walking down the street in broad daylight in Philadelphia, garnered attention because security footage later revealed that many passersby ignored the assault and never called 911. Commenting to a local radio station, Philadelphia's chief of police Charles Ramsay said that this lack of response was becoming "more and more common" and noted that people are more likely to use their cellphones to record assaults than to call the police.

Indeed, YouTube features hundreds of such videos—outbreaks of violence on sidewalks, in shopping malls and at restaurants. Many of these brawls, such as the one that broke out between two women during a victory parade for the New York Giants in 2012, feature crowds of people gathered around, cameras aloft and filming the spectacle.

Our use of technology has fundamentally changed not just our awareness in public spaces but our sense of duty to others. Engaged with the glowing screens in front of us rather than with the people around us, we often honestly don't notice what is going on. Adding to the problem is the ease with which we can record and send images, which encourages those of us who are paying attention to document emergencies rather than deal with them. The fascination with capturing images of violence is nothing new, as anyone who has perused Weegee's photographs of bloody crime scenes from the early 20th century can attest. But the ubiquity of camera-enabled cellphones has shifted the boundaries of acceptable behavior in these situations. We are all Weegee now.

ENLARGE

Our screens often keep us from noticing what's going on around us.
Alamy

But if everyone is filming an emergency, who is responsible for intervening in it? Consider an event from December 2012, when a man was pushed onto the subway tracks in New York City. Struggling unsuccessfully to heave himself onto the platform, he turned, in his final seconds, to see the train barreling down on him. We know this because a freelance photographer who happened to be on the platform took a picture of the awful episode and sold it to the New York Post, which ran it on the front page the next day, prompting public outrage about profiting from a man's death. The photographer noted that others on the platform closer to the man made no effort to rescue him and quickly pulled out their phones to capture images of his dead body.

The brutal nighttime stabbing of Kitty Genovese on a New York City sidewalk in 1964 became a symbol of the uninvolved bystander: Many people heard her screams, but no one went outside to assist her or to intervene in the attack. The incident spawned much hand-wringing and some intriguing social-science research about why we don't always come to each other's aid.

In a 1968 study, the sociologists John Darley and Bibb Latané tested the willingness of individuals to intervene in various emergency situations (a "lady in distress," a smoke-filled room). They found that the larger the number of people present, the more the sense of responsibility was diffused for any given individual. When alone, people were far more likely to help.

In subsequent experiments, carried out by Irving Piliavin, bystanders were much more likely to help an actor on a subway car who pretended to be ill and asked for help. Why? As psychologist Elliot Aronson wrote in his classic textbook "The Social Animal," "People riding on the same subway car do have the feeling of sharing a common fate, and they were in a face-to-face situation with the victim, from which there was no immediate escape."

The problem with many of our new gadgets, as the San Francisco shooting suggests, is that they often keep us from experiencing these face-to-face situations and the unspoken obligations that go with them. Most of these duties—to be aware of others, to practice basic civility—are not onerous. But on rare occasions, we are called upon to help others who are threatened or whose lives are in danger. At those moments, we should not be anticipating how many views we will get on YouTube if we film their distress; we should act. To do otherwise is to risk becoming a society not just of apathetic bystanders but of cruel voyeurs.

—Ms. Rosen is a Future Tense Fellow at the New America Foundation and senior editor of the New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society.

"Bystander effect" is not the same as being tuned-out because of your cellphone or headsets.

There are situations where overall it is safer for a person to be engaged behind headphones or in a screen. In a city, you learn to be situationally aware without being obvious about it - because disturbed, demented people pick up on eye contact. Eye contact can make them more aggressive and dangerous.

So in most cases, the face behind a newspaper or book or screen is the prudent choice on big-city mass transit, even if on occasion it doesn't work.

Not only are you a liar, your a smart a s s. I have never typed anything like you just did online ever. I, was raised far better than you and my wife and I raised 4 boys far better than you. Folks like you who think they are so smart and oh s special yet reek of snot nose snobbery are just one more thing that is so wrong with our Nation today in so many places.

Not so much in small town America ND. Folks here are down to earth and help one another. Hopefully you break down one day and spend a few days alone almost starving to death durning and after a blizzard.

Until your found. Pray to God it ain't me now. Cause I do not foget names or forgive once somebody has drawed down on me when I did nothing to that person what so ever. In a nut shell city brat, you and me are enemies for life now. And it's a smaller world than you think.

Smartphones just make it easier for annoying, oblivious people to be annoying and oblivious. The larger problem, as I see it, is their increasing numbers. Folks with a sense of community, commonality, or basic humanity seem to be getting scarcer.

Major correction: Weegee photographed crime scenes AFTER police were called; he had a (illegal) police scanner in the trunk of his car.

Minor correction: Kitty Genovese was slain in the parking lot of her apartment building after screaming for help for 45 minutes. (And, it almost goes without saying, nobody had a smartphone.)

There are advantages to all the smart phones and cameras. Quite often the bad guys are so proud of their actions that they film it and post it on U tube resulting in their apprehension and conviction. If you want an idea of what is happening in our society read, "White Girls Bleed a Lot". It was researched primarily from u tube videos. Not the stuff that you will read in the NYTimes.

People have been ignoring pleas for help since before the infamous stabbing in NYC a few decades ago.No one can be so absorbed in their phone that they don't hear a .45 blast next to them or someone being assaulted in front of them.The devices and taking video are an excuse for cowardice. The people who would ignore someone who needed help would do the same if they had a newspaper, magazine or convenient window to allow looking the other way.A coward is a coward.

I witnessed a customer on a cell phone call in the supermarket check out line place her items on the conveyor and swipe her credit card. She then gathered up her bags and walked out without so much as an acknowledgment of the cashier or bagger that just served her. I'm sure the building could have been on fire and she wouldn't have noticed.

I have also mistakenly said hello to someone who was walking toward me and talking to me, only to discover that they were using a bluetooth wireless ear piece, and I'm sure they didn't even notice me.

When Google-glass becomes more widely available, there will be a spike in ER visits as people walk head-on into telephone polls, trash pails and the path of a moving NYC taxi. Maybe we should invest in Urgent Care clinics...ha.

Whoever said: "The more connected we are, the more we are isolated" had it right.

Is it the technology that is turning us in to bad samaritans or is it our government that is training us not to respond, but to call the police. Americans are having their guns taken away from them or having the capability of their guns severely limited. Children in schools are being suspended for helping friends or intervening in stopping fights, because they are suppose to call the "authorities" and not respond themselves. So is it the smartphones or the government, I would say that it is a little of both.

This is just more proof of what I have been thinking for a long time. All this new technology is not a better way of thinking and interacting. It is a way of NOT thinking and interacting. It is 99.9% mindless, soulless garbage.

The question of whether a reporter/photographer has an ethical obligation to tell the story or help the victim has been around since the beginning of photojournalism . . . but I'm not to be reading a book or playing a game or listening to music because I must always be wary of gunmen?

This was a confusing essay.

When they came up the printing press, there were those who predicted reading was too distracting. When they came up with telephones, the world was moving too fast and being a distraction. To quote SeinfeldL yada, yada, yada.

But everyday there are people just in my small community who reach out and help others and no one notices or essays about them. In my local news, I see many stories where people help the police with their cell phone accounts. I am certain these acts of kindness and good Samaritan are also performed a hundred times over in our more crowded communities--which is why when the bad happens, it stands out.

Another consideration not mentioned in the article is the promotion of the idea by big city politicians & their chiefs of police that citizens should make no effort to defend themselves from criminals. They are actively prevented from owning firearms and told to call the police if they witness or are victims of a crime. With this continual indoctrination & lacking a firearm is it any wonder that a witness to a crime refrains from engaging in hand to hand combat.

I agree with the sentiment as it applies to people taking video rather than moving to help.

But that people should have been paying attention when the guy pulled a gun, I take issue with that. The fact that people would rather be engaged by whatever on their phones isn't a bad thing. If someone finds that so objectionable then they need to be doing something to curry that attention away from the phone.

We are finally in a place where the tedium of waiting at a doctors office or the DMV isn't a mind numbing boredom and people complain about that?

I have never understood how anyone can simply pass by and not help another when they need it. My wife and I have done our fair share of traveling on vacation across our Nation and so many times we have stopped on the side of the interstate cause some lady was broke down and let me tell you how grateful more than 1 was. Everything from a flat tire to a blown radiator hose. Sure they had a cell phone, but that does not take the place of the feeling a person gets from knowing that folks still are around that do not mind pitching in and lending a hand.

Frankly we have never had Triple AAA and I don'y see any reason now to ever get it. Growing up like I did on a farm here in North Dakota and own my own and also involved with a decent size family owned oil field service company, I reckon I can putty much fix just about anything on the spot. And since I enjoy getting dirty/greasy I always care quite a bit of tools in our RV. Also come sin handy in RV Parks. amazes me the fellas who cannot work on much.

A partial explanation, and only a very partial one at that, is that people who stand up and help are often only those who are used to standing up. Those not used to responding tend to freeze or lock up. I've sometimes been in a scene as a regular citizen and seen others just standing with a "Bambi in the headlights" look on their faces.

But sometimes all it takes is for one man or woman to stop the car, to say "Do you need help?", to call 911, or turn to others who look capable and say, "We need to protect others from this madman." That sometimes shakes people from their stupor and allows them to step up.

Lack of training plays a part. First aid training gives confidence, which removes some of the fear of taking that first step. Many citizens who respond (myself included) are military veterans with extensive first aid training. The rest can get some of that training at Red Cross.

We can talk on and on here about why people bury themselves in their iPads or take pictures of the action. But we can also get trained and be able to step up if needed. There's a relevant saying: "In an emergency situation, people don't rise to the occasion. They sink to the level of their training."

Last point: This is for accidents, falls, etc. that are most common. For those rare hostile actions see comments by David Heltel and Lance Savage on the first comment page. Know the situation. Be safe.

Stay calm, and always make a point to check a person's posting history. Charleen is a regular here - right-of-center, and she sometimes uses sarcasm, and a 'snarky' humor and wit that is fun to read. Based on her history, she wasn't slamming you, just teasing.

Not all posts will have the smiley faces and other such clues to guide you, so you have to work at it a bit...

@Scott: No, not tackle, just be aware and respond as the situation merits. From an evolutionary point of view, any animal who was exposed to, but oblivious of, a predator wouldn't survive long enough to reproduce.

I have looked at the combined crime rate for ND/WY/SD/MT and stacked it up against just Chicago and all states fall well below the crime rate of the windy city. And I looked at the total combined population of all 4 states and it is more than Chicago. Sowhy is it that 4 states with more folks have far less violent crimes/murders? And in my state of ND and WY/SD/MT just about everybody has more than 1 weapon. That is a good question.

I appreciate your sentiments, but consider this situation: Someone has not merely had a breakdown on the freeway but has broken her spine. Do you intervene? If you shift her, you might damage her spinal cord. And maybe you don't know that her spine is broken. Maybe it's not, but you shift her, and later it's discovered that she's suffered damage to her spinal cord. You're blamed. You're sued.

I wonder if folks decide it's easier to be a witness than to risk being a hero, because being a hero can get you in deep trouble. Perhaps that is part of the problem.

Skype and e-mail are useful. Texting a pain in the patoot. Tweeting is the lowest form of communication imaginable that allows people to express their most brutish and irresponsible opinions anonymously and irresponsibly. It is to communication what the drive-by shooting is to urban life.

I could not agree more. 1 of many benefits of living in our home state of North Dakota is that so many places you get no cell phone service. Where our home is (17 miles from town) no cell phone works till your almost in town.

1. It is not about being a hero or being the next you tube flash in the pan. It is about doing the right thing.

2.You sure are dealing with a'lot of what if's Chauncey. I reckon thats ok for you but back here on the farm we had rather deal with situations as they unfold, so to speak.

3. Over the years I have stopped and helped a many a person here in a North Dakota Winter and also over in MT and down in WY/CO/SD.

Just the way we are raised I reckon. I know that folks over the years I have helped out have told me or my wife that where they are from that would not happen unless the person that was stopping was doing so to rob them,

There is nothing wrong with having a Smartphone as long as it is used with some civility. Taking pictures/videos of a man dying in the subway or of an accident but not doing anything to intervene is horrible. Instead people post it on YouTube.

Smartphone to find directions or to read work e-mail when stuck in an airport, or to check the weather once in a while is ok. But when Smartphone comes in as the third person in a two person conversation and essentially takes over people's lives it is crazy. It is coming in the way for people to make good decisions as nobody is thinking!

I see couples now in a restaurant both on their phone for the entire meal almost...Is that a relationship?

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